There is nothing better than being a parent. It is the most challenging job one could ever ask for. I love being a mom and I love being a friend to my children as well.

My friends and I would get up early and take our horses through the national forest. My mom was very free. It was always 'Out of the house!' There was no watching television on weekends.

I grew up with just my mom. She and I were like best friends. She's a very independent woman and I admire that about her. In my life, I've tried to be like that. To be okay with being on my own and being independent.

You don't realize how hard it is to live on your own. But there's no mom to do your laundry, and make you dinner and to do things for you, and you don't think about little things like buying paper towels and salt.

I work too much to be an appropriate parent. I feel like a bad mom to my dog some days because I'm just not here enough. I just feel like I would do a bad job if I took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I'm doing.

I live in, literally, the same home when I was swiping my first bank card and wondering if I'd have to put back the Charmin. We still don't have a dishwasher. My mom has done all these gardens so now my house looks like the garden shack in the middle of Versailles.

My mom, who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years, is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.

Good food and a warm kitchen are what makes a house a home. I always tried to make my home like my mother's, because Mom was magnificent at stretching a buck when it came to decorating and food. Like a true Italian, she valued beautification in every area of her life, and I try to do the same.

I came from a broken home, so my mom was a major influence in my life.

I lived with my mom in a really small apartment. My bedroom was like in the living room. That's why I still love to sleep on couches now.